digital lyceum

Last Friday, November 30, we assembled a great group of people at Emerson College to discuss the future of the Digital Lyceum project. The group includedDavid Bogen, Rebecca Nesson, Bill Seaman, Joshua Green, Drew Harry, Helen Thorington, Jo-Anne Green, Phil Long and Paul Stacey.   The day began with extended introductions from all the participants, which actually served to introduce the major discussion points to which we returned throughout the day. Those included: the intellectual work of barroom chatter, virtual people as active participants, and social interaction as spatial design. We concluded that there is a lot of experimentation taking place in the implementation of network technology in the live event (our conversation tended to focus on the conference or symposium), but little in the way of research. There is a need for some kind of relatively systematic document and analysis of this work. Do audiences gain anything from the technological addition? Does it change the nature of the event or the way knowledge is acquired? The day-long conversation, even though it meandered a bit through various topics, gave us some focus for the short-term goals of this project. As I understand them now, they are as follows:

• Create a site (blog, wiki) for people or institutions working on the production of mixed reality events to share experiences and learn from others.
• Design guidelines and train RAs to execute a qualitative study on ‘mixed reality’ events.
• Host open source tools for people to use in their own events (these will be freely available on the condition that they let our research team study their use).

That gives us more than enough to do over the next several months. We will continue to use this blog to report on project development and the interesting work of others.

This blog is where we’re going to think through all the permutations of what we’re calling augmented place.  But primarily, this space will be used to collect thoughts and resources that relate to the Digital Lyceum project.   The goal of that project, in short, is to research best practices and propose a sustainable model for creating and facilitating “mixed reality” lecture-style events.  This can include public lectures or everyday classroom activities.   When I explain this project to people, often their first reaction is shudder at the possibility of giving audiences and/or students more media by which to be distracted.  But then when I explain that this sort of distraction is already a part of most interactions (alainfomania), and we’re just trying to funnel those distractions towards the most productive / interesting end, they begin to understand a little bit more about what we’re trying to do.

Consider the contemporary television game show.  Audiences are encouraged to go online during a broadcast to chat, interact, and participate.  In a sense, audiences are asked to be in two places at once, and they do a pretty darn good job of it.  They produce while consuming - of course, in the context of network television that production is funneled towards more consumption.  In the classroom, or the lecture hall, that kind of participation might be directed towards helping to construct the event.  In other words, students or participants can help shape the tone and content of an event by participating in back-channels that seep into the main channel - either in real time or at the moment of archiving.   The record of a lecture can include student commentary (recorded in real-time); the record of a lecture might include useful web links that flesh out ideas or expose contradictions.  While the content continues to be authored by the speaker, the event is authored by the group.

We are going to use this space to collect examples of best practices.  How are universities using this technology to foster the group authoring of events?  Is it being used at conferences?  Is it being used in the classroom?  Are people using simple text back channels, or more involved systems like Second Life or There.com.  What is the future of this practice?  And by documenting what is going on, can we help shape that future?

If you, or anyone you know, is actively engaged in the production of group authored, mixed-reality events, please respond to this post.  We’re looking to understand the wide range of practices that are out there.